I need to dig into this more. A free/near free way to deploy updates to things like Java/Adobe Reader/Adobe flash, would be awesome.

Those are all included in Chocolatey's repository. We just don't include them as standard as we avoid Java and Flash as default deployments. We should really move Reader to Chocolatey, though, as that is something that it would handle better than Reader's own updater.

@ajstringham It does have a GUI available although it is fairly simple. Do choco install ChocolateyExplorer, although that does get rid of some of the more powerful aspects of Chocolatey.

I looked at Ninite Pro once. It is pretty sweet.

Chocolatey is completely free, which is pretty nice. All open source. It is similar to a yum or apt repo.

I want to say that Ninite is like $2/machine/year or something insanely cheap like that. I know they do volume discounts but I can't remember their exact pricing structure.

Sort of. $240/year for up to 100 devices. So if you have 1 device, it is $240. Only people with exactly 100 devices get down to $2.40/device. Average cost per device would be much higher. It's a bizarre pricing scheme. If you have 101 devices it jumps to $600/year. So realistically you never come anywhere close to the $2-3/year range.

$4-6 / device / year isn't horrible, but compared to free, it's not nothing. And maintaining licensing agreements has its own overhead.

@ajstringham It does have a GUI available although it is fairly simple. Do choco install ChocolateyExplorer, although that does get rid of some of the more powerful aspects of Chocolatey.

I looked at Ninite Pro once. It is pretty sweet.

Chocolatey is completely free, which is pretty nice. All open source. It is similar to a yum or apt repo.

I want to say that Ninite is like $2/machine/year or something insanely cheap like that. I know they do volume discounts but I can't remember their exact pricing structure.

Sort of. $240/year for up to 100 devices. So if you have 1 device, it is $240. Only people with exactly 100 devices get down to $2.40/device. Average cost per device would be much higher. It's a bizarre pricing scheme. If you have 101 devices it jumps to $600/year. So realistically you never come anywhere close to the $2-3/year range.

$4-6 / device / year isn't horrible, but compared to free, it's not nothing. And maintaining licensing agreements has its own overhead.

Yeah. I LOVE Ninite, the free version, for home. I use it to update my programs and deploy a set of programs to computers all the time, without bloatware, etc.

Also, considering that most people aren't going to use something like this with less than 15-20 devices, minimum, it drops down to closer to $1 than $2/device/month, which isn't bad.

@ajstringham It does have a GUI available although it is fairly simple. Do choco install ChocolateyExplorer, although that does get rid of some of the more powerful aspects of Chocolatey.

I looked at Ninite Pro once. It is pretty sweet.

Chocolatey is completely free, which is pretty nice. All open source. It is similar to a yum or apt repo.

I want to say that Ninite is like $2/machine/year or something insanely cheap like that. I know they do volume discounts but I can't remember their exact pricing structure.

Sort of. $240/year for up to 100 devices. So if you have 1 device, it is $240. Only people with exactly 100 devices get down to $2.40/device. Average cost per device would be much higher. It's a bizarre pricing scheme. If you have 101 devices it jumps to $600/year. So realistically you never come anywhere close to the $2-3/year range.

$4-6 / device / year isn't horrible, but compared to free, it's not nothing. And maintaining licensing agreements has its own overhead.

Exactly, and I find myself in that boat. I have 110 devices, Definitely getting the short end of the stick for the $600 cost.

@ajstringham It does have a GUI available although it is fairly simple. Do choco install ChocolateyExplorer, although that does get rid of some of the more powerful aspects of Chocolatey.

I looked at Ninite Pro once. It is pretty sweet.

Chocolatey is completely free, which is pretty nice. All open source. It is similar to a yum or apt repo.

I want to say that Ninite is like $2/machine/year or something insanely cheap like that. I know they do volume discounts but I can't remember their exact pricing structure.

Sort of. $240/year for up to 100 devices. So if you have 1 device, it is $240. Only people with exactly 100 devices get down to $2.40/device. Average cost per device would be much higher. It's a bizarre pricing scheme. If you have 101 devices it jumps to $600/year. So realistically you never come anywhere close to the $2-3/year range.

$4-6 / device / year isn't horrible, but compared to free, it's not nothing. And maintaining licensing agreements has its own overhead.

Exactly, and I find myself in that boat. I have 110 devices, Definitely getting the short end of the stick for the $600 cost.

Though I do agree it's not an outrageous price.

With 110 devices, at $50/month, or $600/year, you're looking at about $0.45/device/month, so less than $6/device/year. Ninite integrates with AD too, from what they say. It's a cool tool.

I'm finding keeping a check on the number of licences or devices we have for all our subscription contracts a bit of a ball-ache - InTune, GFI Mailmax, Adobe CC, Autodesk, O365, TrendMicro antivirus....the list gets longer and longer. Sometimes I like to just pay a set fee and forget about it.

@Carnival-Boy the Ninite style pricing only works out easier if you fall into a category where you safely won't grow past another pricing tier limit. Otherwise you have the bad pricing plus all of the monitoring and auditing work of other pricing options.

I need to dig into this more. A free/near free way to deploy updates to things like Java/Adobe Reader/Adobe flash, would be awesome.

Those are all included in Chocolatey's repository. We just don't include them as standard as we avoid Java and Flash as default deployments. We should really move Reader to Chocolatey, though, as that is something that it would handle better than Reader's own updater.

I stopped using reader and started using Foxit. Reader always took a bazillion megs of ram and Foxit seems to have more tools.

I did have to use reader one time for a pdf for my transcripts because it was encrypted and stopped working after 30 days, but other than that I use Foxit.

I need to dig into this more. A free/near free way to deploy updates to things like Java/Adobe Reader/Adobe flash, would be awesome.

Those are all included in Chocolatey's repository. We just don't include them as standard as we avoid Java and Flash as default deployments. We should really move Reader to Chocolatey, though, as that is something that it would handle better than Reader's own updater.

I stopped using reader and started using Foxit. Reader always took a bazillion megs of ram and Foxit seems to have more tools.

I did have to use reader one time for a pdf for my transcripts because it was encrypted and stopped working after 30 days, but other than that I use Foxit.

I don't know if it has a Chocolatey package or not but Sumatra PDF is a really nice reader, I generally install that before anything else.